Trisquel Does Not Start
Hello,
I have a Libreboot T400 which I have used daily since 2017. A few days ago when I started the computer it booted as normal but after the Trisquel logo when the log in screen should have appeared, the screen just turned dark. This have never happened before.
I contacted Minifree but they did not know how to solve the problem and the thing the told me to try did not work. (They told me to press E after boot and then erase the lines that said "linux/....root=/...... and then press F10 but nothing changed after doing that.)
Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be or do I need to reinstall the entire operating system? If I need to reinstall Trisquel, is there any way of saving a few photos that I would like to not lose?
Can you get terminal ctrl+alt+F1/F2?
If the disk is not encrypted, you can rescue and retreive your home directory by booting a live CD or USB thumb drive. Just do a plain copy transfer to another medium.
Yes, I am able to get into the terminal and log in there.
The disk is encrypted so I could not get into it by using a live USB.
Inputting the password from the live system should allow you to access your encrypted data. But you can perform as well the backup from the text session you get with Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or Ctrl+Alt+F2 or...). For example, you can plug an external hard drive and copy /home there ('mount' tells where its filesystems are mounted) with 'sudo cp -a /home /path/to/backup/directory'. You can also diagnose the problem from the text session (using 'journalctl') and maybe fix it.
Thank you! I was able to save my data with a live USB just by right clicking and open the folder as an admin so it probably wasn't encrypted.
I checked "journalctl" and didn't really know what I was looking for but I read through it and it said that lightdm failed to start. I checked online and people with similar problems were able to start by writing "sudo start lightdm" but that did not work for me. Do you have any idea what I could do? If not, do you think that the problem will be solved by reinstalling Trisquel?
Reinstalling Trisquel (and all the packages you added on top of the default system) would certainly solve the problem... but it would be more instructive to fix it. LightDM is the responsible for displaying the screen where you can graphically log in the system. So we already knew it fails to start. Isn't there any additional information in the journal?
By the way, you can use the -p option of 'journalctl' to only red the message whose "gravity level" is at least the number specified in argument (smaller is more critical). For instance, to only read messages that are at least errors:
$ journalctl -p 3
To get as well the warnings (but nothing more trivial such as simple notices):
$ journalctl -p 4
It says "lightdm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'" and "lightdm.service: Failed with result 'start-limit-hit'".
It also says some other things but I do not know if they are related. I attached some photos of the screen.
I am sorry for asking so many questions. I really appreciate your help.
Searching the Web for "lightdm.service: Failed with result 'start-limit-hit'" returns similar problems. The configuration of LightDM seems faulty in all cases. For information, I only have one file "users.conf" and an empty "lightdm.conf.d" directory in /etc/lightdm:
$ ls /etc/lightdm/*
/etc/lightdm/users.conf
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d:
Here is the content of my "/etc/lightdm/users.conf" (I believe it is Trisquel's default):
$ cat /etc/lightdm/users.conf
#
# User accounts configuration
#
# NOTE: If you have AccountsService installed on your system, then LightDM will
# use this instead and these settings will be ignored
#
# minimum-uid = Minimum UID required to be shown in greeter
# hidden-users = Users that are not shown to the user
# hidden-shells = Shells that indicate a user cannot login
#
[UserList]
minimum-uid=500
hidden-users=nobody nobody4 noaccess
hidden-shells=/bin/false /usr/sbin/nologin
However I (and probably you) "have AccountsService installed". I believe (part of?) the configuration is then in /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d:
$ ls /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d
50-disable-log-backup.conf 50-greeter-wrapper.conf 50-guest-wrapper.conf 50-ubuntu-mate.conf 50-unity-greeter.conf 50-xserver-command.conf
Those files do not contain much here:
$ cat /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/*
[LightDM]
# Disable log backup - we use logrotate instead
backup-logs=false
[Seat:*]
greeter-wrapper=/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-greeter-session
[Seat:*]
guest-wrapper=/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session
[Seat:*]
user-session=mate
[Seat:*]
greeter-session=unity-greeter
[Seat:*]
# Dump core
xserver-command=X -core
Maybe you removed the so-called "greeter"? Do you have the the "unity-greeter" package installed (it includes in particular the graphics for the login screen)? Try to install it:
$ sudo apt install unity-greeter
As a side note, 'journalctl' allows you to only read the messages that relate to a specific unit (such as the LightDM service):
$ journalctl -u lightdm
I tried to install the greeter but it said that I already have the latest version. I looked around online but nothing is working so far. I will keep looking around and hopefully get my computer working again.
Thank you so much for the help.